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Must Read Literature books for Elementary students?


Rosepetal
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I have an 8 yo, 3rd grader and I have compiled some must read literature for my dd which are:

 

Baby island

Little House book series

Ramona books series

Stuart Little

The Courage of Sarah Noble

The Bear on Hemlock Mountain

The Cricket in Time Square

Because of Winnie Dixie

Penderwick series books

Pippi Long stockings

My Father's Dragon

Frindle

Harriet the Spy

Shiloh

Mrs. Frisby and the rats of Nimh 

Charlotte's web

Charlie and Chocolate factory

The Velveteen Rabbit

From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E.Frankweiler

 

I would love to hear how you all do guided reading for challenging literature books? In your opinion which books reading will get the child for challenging books like King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table,

The Door in the Wall, The Princess and the Goblin,The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow and The King's Shadow? For which grades these books are recommended? Grade 3 or above? For the advanced books do you buddy read, let them read aloud to you and discuss each page and new vocab for a child to get them comprehend the complex sentence structure and vocabulary?

 

What are your must read books in elementary which will lay the strong foundation for the challenging books?
Thanks! 

Edited by Rosepetal
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I would not read The Courage of Sarah Noble. The Little House books are fairly problematic too, as is Cricket in Times Square. They were written in a different time, but you're reading them with a fairly young child today. It's easy to say you'll just teach your kid that racism is bad, but when you're presenting books with racist sentiments as literature then you're sort of mixing up your messages.

 

(And I'd hold off on Harriet the Spy until the kid is closer in age to Harriet, which would allow us to have some pretty deep discussions about the queer coding and the fact that way back when, LGBT people like Louise Fitzhugh often had even more difficulty than they do today.)

 

More generally, I notice that your booklist is not very diverse. They say that literature should be both a mirror and a window. Right now, at least when it comes to the human protagonists, it looks like it's only one of the two.

 

My booklist for this age group, if we keep the same approximate reading level, would look more like this:

 

How Tia Lola Came to Stay

The Birchbark House series

One Ramona book, then the Fletcher Family series

Stuart Little

The Pickpocket's Tale

The Mighty Miss Malone

The Year of the Dog

Because of Winnie Dixie

Penderwick series books

Pippi Longstocking

My Father's Dragon

Frindle

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything

Shiloh

Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH

Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer

Oddity

From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

The Night Diary

Zahrah the Windseeker

El Deafo

 

There. Now, I've kept some of your book choices, but I mixed it up a bit more.

 

Many of these books are a bit difficult for the average third grader - they're written on approximately a fifth grade reading level. I stuck to that same reading level, but is that the difficulty you're aiming for?

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Some of DD's favorites, some have already been mentioned:

 

El Deafo (I just had to buy a second copy for her because she lost the original after reading it 30ish times)

Because of Winn Dixie

The Wizard of Oz

The Birchbark House series

Understood Betsy

The Tale of Despereaux

Wonder

Bambi

Momo (Ende)

The Little Prince

Four Dolls (Godden)

a lot of Geraldine McCaughrean's stuff, like Greek Myths, The Jesse Tree, Peter Pan in Scarlet (official sequel to Peter Pan)

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Black Beauty

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DS & I found Stuart Little choppy & dull, to be honest. We vastly preferred the Ralph S. Mouse trilogy (Mouse & the Motorcycle, Runaway Ralph, Ralph S. Mouse).

 

Our upcoming read-aloud list includes:

Tales from the Odyssey

Anna Hibiscus

Babe

The BFG

The Reluctant Dragon

Charlotte’s Web

Clementine

Le Petit Prince

The Night Fairy

Mr. Popper’s Penguins

Nim’s Island

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Pippi Longstocking

The Tale of Desperaux

The Trumpet of the Swan

Ragweed (prequel to Poppy)

Wonder

Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of NIMH

The Rescuers

 

I think I’ll add Year of the Dog from PP’s List above, as well - should be interesting for my DS, who is in a reversed situation (we are American expats in Asia).

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